Day 5: Transforming love

I know. Im a geek. Any time someone uses the word “transform” I think of the robot race from Cybertron. It just happens. But in some ways it’s fitting. In a very, very geeky way.

Today’s devotional is about the kind of love that changes everything. In popular culture, we like to credit “love” with a lot of things. Love lifts us up where we belong. Love is a many splendored thing. Love is blind, in a good way, not in a mice going to their doom way. All we need is love. Love is all we need.

And it’s nice to think that way. It’s romantic to think that if you just really really love someone intensely, that everything will work out and love conquers all and makes life beautiful come what may. Sounds like a musical. Maybe something taking place in Paris. With a beautiful but dying hooker with a heart of gold and a poor starving musician who could also possibly be a young Jedi in training…

Problem is that love fails us. When the music score stops swelling and the scene ends, we’re faced with reality. The reality of us. The reality of two flawed, selfish people who thought that stuff will just work itself out. That if we just try hard enough, life will be manageable. We thought maybe the fighting and narcissistic tendencies (exhibited mostly by the other person) would eventually morph, quite naturally, into some kind of working arrangement where we both would get most… ok some… well, a few of our needs met.

But marriage doesn’t stop being hard out of sheer will alone. And if you’re fighting with each other it’s not going to subside on its own. And the transformation you’re hoping for isn’t going to happen overnight like pushing a miracle button that turns a robot into an 18 wheeler.

What love can do can change the world. But it’s not your love for each other, as great as that may be. Your love will have its ebbs and flows. It will be, in best of times, like the ocean tides, in and out and sometimes stinky. At worst of times it will be a drought dried river. And a miracle rain is the only cure.

Love is that cure. But not just any love that we conjure up. A love that does not have tides. A love that is incomprehensible. A love that walked thousands of miles and galaxies to come seek you and save you. A love that died and fought all your wars, the real war to end all wars. A love that transforms.

It is this love that becomes our nest for our marriage. The stable resting place where we feed and learn to fly. This love pushes us to change, to become strong, to endure. It takes our weak wings and makes them extend and cut through air. Love takes a small thing, and makes it majestic and free.

We pray our marriage transforms us. We pray that God uses our spouse to sharpen us, to bring out the best in us, expose the worst in us, and take all of us and make us beautiful. And what we once seemed is not who we prove to be, because we become more with time. Because we discover new ways to improve and adjust, a well tuned machine, useful and glorious, getting better and better together, defeating sin and death together, serving others together, winning the wars together. Transform us, o Lord, to your image, for your glory.